The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Fans of The Hunger Games can rejoice at the return of their beloved franchise to the big screen, albeit with this prequel from Suzanne Collins’ popular 2020 novel of the same name.
Explores themes that seek to push young adult storytelling into darker, more cerebral and edgier spaces.
Finds two talented fresh faces in Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler to potentially rekindle mainstream interest in The Hunger Games franchise.
NO
Falls flat, never really digs deep and takes the spectacle and tension of The Hunger Games experience and tosses it to the background, while trying to cultivate an origin story of sorts for future villain Coriolanus Snow.
While music is a part of the story, Zegler sings so often in the film that you start to wonder if this is a promotional vehicle for a new album.
Though individually talented, Blyth and Zegler fail to generate chemistry in an overlong, convoluted and mismanaged film that bores more than it thrills.
OUR REVIEW
Jennifer Lawrence can rest easy - her connection and legacy as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games films from 2012-2015 remains secure. As a new prequel arrives, tagged The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, we have an exhausting, disappointing and overlong 157-minute mess to pick through as we return to Panem and revisit this post-apocalyptic dystopia.
Back to direct this new installment, after leading films two through four in the franchise, Francis Lawrence’s attempts to adapt Suzanne Collins’ 2020 novel fails to find a cohesive tone, or much of anything for us to get excited about. We end up laboring through a film that is in no hurry to tell us the origin story of how a young, eyes-wide-open Coriolanus Snow develops into a man who, decades later, rules the post-apocalyptic world of Panem as a murderous, cutthroat tyrant.
Portrayed by Tom Blyth, Snow, around 18-19 years old when we first meet him, has striking features - pillowy blonde hair and pooling blue eyes. He is fiercely loyal to his family, especially close with his cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer), who is something of a family advisor. When he is chosen to serve as a mentor for the 10th annual Hunger Games event (the film takes place some 64 years prior to the first Hunger Games film), Snow is observing everything - analyzing who the power players are and quietly studying the Hunger Games process to best know how to find a pathway for his mentee to survive and win.
That mentee is Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler), known in her home of District 12 as a prominent singer (more on that in a moment). “Good luck singing your way out of this one,” grumbles a heckler as Lucy Gray is named tribute. That outburst gets a snake placed down the back of her shirt by Lucy Gray, who then proceeds to sing her protests from the stage, captivating Snow, who watches her selection on a live broadcast feed.
And so, soon paired together, we see Snow and Lucy Gray engage in a cautious tap dance with one another. We also meet the manipulative, sinister Volumnia Gaul (a campy, theatrical Viola Davis), the head gamemaker/designer for the Hunger Games, and Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), the original idea maker behind the entire Hunger Games concept.
In working with a screenplay by Michael Lesslie and Oscar-winner Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine), Francis Lawrence seems lost in balancing out nuance and pacing. Divided into three separate chapters, which does very little to organize or provide real structure to the actual film, the film gets progressively less interesting the longer it goes on. And while it is rare to advocate for something to be longer in a day and age of the multi-episode, all-at-once, binge-watch world we find ourselves in, you cannot help but wonder if this project would not have been better served as a patient, slow build of a three-part miniseries.
And yet, we have this. A dampened story and presentation which could not catch fire with a flamethrower. Though their characters are hesitant in trusting one another despite catching feelings, Blyth and Zegler struggle mightily to develop any tangible chemistry with one another as an on-screen duo. Beyond that, Zegler is not so much miscast here as she is vastly misused.
Saddled with an accent that never fits comfortably for her, her character’s musical talents are used as a constant drumbeat throughout the film. Common with the book, at one point in the film’s excessively boring second stanza, Zegler’s singing happens so often, it starts to overwhelm a film that is supposed to be about an idealistic young man who becomes broken down and manipulated into becoming the very thing he thought he would never become. How the potential allure of power and greed can steer people astray.
But whether singing on screen, or heard within the score and soundtrack (Zegler even covers Jennifer Lawrence’s “The Hanging Tree,” the hit song from the 2014 film Mockingjay - Part 1), The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes feels at times less like a Hunger Games movie and more like the prospective name of Rachel Zegler’s new album.
In all honesty, one macabre appeal of these films is the heightened anxiety around the actual fight for survival within each movie. This time around, while a Hunger Games event exists within the film, it largely takes a backseat to moments replete with stilted dialogue and contrived utterances which cause groans and an eyeball or two to roll back in your head.
For example, in the film’s third chapter, when Snow finds a gun stashed by Lucy Gray, we hear her ask him what he has. As we cut back to Snow, he stands there holding the gun, facing her, then pauses briefly and then says, “It’s a gun.”
A subplot involving Snow and his best friend Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera), delves into themes of splintered morality, friendship, and coming to terms with a personal sense of right and wrong. The outcome is telegraphed and transparent, predictable and obvious. In another moment, a character confides in the other by stating “you can trust me…I promise.”
I think we all know where that is headed.
And on and on we go. For a film this long, which tries to build to an almost cerebral analysis of the eradication of Snow’s sense of fairness and responsibility, we have a scene near the end where Davis’ character literally summarizes a number of key moments which would have been fascinating to watch unfold within the film. We realize Lawrence has dwelled too long in moments that ultimately mean very little. At least, the costumes from Trish Summerville are fun and accentuate the character’s personalities appropriately. Dinklage and Schafer deliver nice supporting turns and Jason Schwartzman is clearly having a ball playing the bloodthirsty host of all this Hunger Games carnage.
Unfortunately these games simply don’t play. Nothing leaps off the screen, few things feel dire, little happens to make us truly care about the characters or their situational struggles.
Remember the infamous siren that alerted everyone to a mortal elimination in the competition? Remember Rue’s death in the first film? The growth and evolution of Katniss Everdeen’s character? Or, the clever gamesmanship that made Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson such an intriguing on-screen couple to revisit film to film?
Here? We are singing folk songs.
CAST & CREW
Starring; Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Josh Andrés Rivera, Hunter Schafer, Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis, Jason Schwartzman, Fionnula Flanagan, Burn Gorman, Ashley Liao, Max Raphael, Zoe Renee, Nick Benson, Isobel Jesper Jones, George Somner
Director: Francis Lawrence
Written by: Michael Lesslie, Michael Arndt
Based on the novel “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” by Suzanne Collins
Release Date: November 17, 2023
Lionsgate